socialism reformist rather than revolutionary Success meant that, despite rhetoric of revolution, the party found itself absorbed into the conventional political process In Great Britain, the Marxist critique failed to take hold Rather the approach was “Gas and Water Socialism,” under the Fabian Society It began on January 4, 1884, when members of the Fellowship of the New Life took a political approach to the Fellowship’s goal of the transformation of society by setting an example of simple, clean living The Fellowship faded, and the Fabians drew members such as Sidney and Beatrice Potter Webb, H G Wells, and George Bernard Shaw These were elite reformers who felt that socialism could transform society by slow penetration of its principles into the fabric of capitalist society They had no interest—and perhaps no true awareness—of class politics, including labor unions and labor parties The driving force was the Webbs, who wrote the bulk of the studies of Britain’s industrial system and alternative policies for capital and land The Fabian Society was named for Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus, “Cunctator” or “Delayer,” who fought through harassment and attrition rather than head on confrontations Fabians were against free trade but supported nationalist foreign policy in South Africa They were significant in the establishment of the Labour Party in 1900 They advocated government ownership of utilities and land and other resources, but they insisted that all changes come through law rather than revolution SOCIALISM AND NATIONALISM In the late 19th century the various socialist groups became increasingly nationalistic Universal male suffrage became common in the western world during the first decades of the 20th century Socialism became increasingly tied to labor unions and labor parties, which increasingly mobilized the working class vote As socialists got access to power, they became more pragmatic, recognizing that they still needed the middle and wealthy classes to achieve their aims Those classes still owned the bureaucratic apparatus of the state And the welfare state made the workers’ lives better, delaying the revolution The involvement of socialists with government split the parties into moderates and radicals in the 20th century Eduard Bernstein represented the moderates who thought that the reforms could come through the democratic political process This was the basic social democracy Communists in countries without a 393 parliamentary democracy argued for revolution; Vladimir Lenin argued this path In 1903 the Russian social democrats split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks By the early 20th century, Germany’s Social Democratic Party had abandoned the revolutionary goal completely and backed Kaiser Wilhelm, in the process destroying its credibility with foreign socialist movements The other socialist parties backed their governments one by one, destroying the international working-class movement in a wave of nationalism The American Socialist Party was the exception in refusing to back the war, but it was a weak organization nationally and internationally, never able to win more than percent of the vote Marx and other socialists ignored or discounted working-class differences of nationality, religion, ethnicity, and gender These were factors that the capitalists exploited to divide and weaken the workers For socialists, the real division was between a unified, homogeneous working class and a unified capitalist class As reality intruded during the 19th-century era of socialism, intrusion of nationalism and other differences forced the socialists to adjust their doctrine to keep it relevant to workers who were also male and female members of ethnic, national, and religious communities Socialism won out over anarchism and other ideas within the working-class movement because it was better organized and had a more realistic political strategy It fit nicely with the alienated workers of the large factories and plants of 19th-century capitalism, workers more prone to alienation and more susceptible to pitches about solidarity than were the workers of the small crafts industries of early industrialism Socialism also deemphasized millenarianism, stressing instead a better tomorrow in the here and now with tangible bread and butter results Until the Russian Revolution, no one had any way of measuring the validity or effectiveness of the socialist promises of economic equality and fairness for all Social democrats had better success than socialists did They were more gradualist, advocating high taxes to promote relative equality, government regulation, nationalization as necessary, and social welfare Scandinavia was most successful with this approach, but other European countries adapted some elements Late in the 20th century and early in the 21st, governments began dismantling at least parts of these social democracies Further reading: Cole, G D H “Fabianism,” In Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, edited by Edwin R A Seligman